Sink: Old Man's Tale by Perrin Briar Page B

machine yet. A little more tinkering and it’ll be done.”
    “What do you need to tinker with?” Leader said.
    “Just, uh, a few bits and pieces,” Jeremiah said.
    Leader placed his hand on the machine, his thumb resting on the big red power button.
    “You know, we had another engineer down here once, working on this machine,” he said. “He told us what materials he needed, when he needed help. He was close to finishing and going home for good. But then he turned out to be a… disappointment. It turned out he’d been taking late night walks through town. He met some… unfavorable types, and they told him things that made him stop working on the digger.
    “The engineer tried to run, escape, and when we caught him he refused to build the last part of the machine. Despite not being able to go home, he refused. And no matter how hard we tried, we just couldn’t get the machine to work. We never did find out who told him these things, but we maintained a tighter grip on the townsfolk after that. Should the need to know where one of our star engineers was, we could follow them with ease.”
    “I wouldn’t turn it on,” Jeremiah said. “You risk breaking the whole machine and it’ll never get working again.”
    Leader pursed his lips.
    “I’ll take the risk,” he said.
    He pressed the power button. The engine chugged. The huge drill bits spun in circles.
    “You were saying?” Leader said.
    “Yes,” Graham said. “We were saying. We were saying that the digger might work fine right now but there’s no way of telling if it will work for very long. Isn’t that right, Jeremiah?”
    “Yes,” Jeremiah said. “That’s right.”
    “And how long would this digger last, do you think?” Leader said with a flat expression.
    “Anywhere from ten minutes to… one hour,” Jeremiah said.
    “We’d best test it out and see how it does, hadn’t we?” Leader said.
    Leader clapped his hands and the doors opened. A flood of guards and other little men in purple uniforms surrounded the digger. The guards seized Graham and Jeremiah.
    “What are you doing?” Jeremiah said. “I built this so we can all go home.”
    “You will go home the moment we return to the surface,” Leader said. “But we won’t be returning in quite the manner you expected.”
    The little men in purple uniforms began taking the machine apart.
    “What are you doing?” Graham said. “That’s our way back home! Stop!”
    “They are backward engineering it,” Leader said.
    “Backward engineering?” Jeremiah said. “What for?”
    “They’re not going to be able to build their own if they don’t know how this one was put together now, can they?” Leader said.
    “Have I skipped a couple of chapters or something?” Jeremiah said. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”
    “My men will backward engineer your power converter and add it to our other diggers,” Leader said.
    Jeremiah turned pale.
    “What other diggers?” he said.
    “You didn’t think there was just one digger, did you?” Leader said, a grin spreading across his features.
    “You have more?” Graham said. “How many more?”
    “Oh, quite enough to do what we need,” Leader said.
    “What are you going to do?” Graham said.
    “Sometimes in order for some to rise, others must fall,” Leader said.
    “You’re insane,” Graham said. “The world won’t sit back and let you do this. They will attack you.”
    “They won’t be so quick to attack when they learn we have drills beneath their cities, ready to sink them all unless they meet our demands,” Leader said.
    “The world has moved on,” Jeremiah said. “It’s no longer the world you remember. You and your people will die.”
    “Perhaps,” Leader said. “But we will die fighting.”
    He turned to the guards.
    “Take them away,” he said.

Chapter Twenty-Seven
     
     
    The ground rushed up and high-fived Graham on the cheek with a meaty slap. He got to his feet with a spryness capable only